Design played a crucial role in promoting social progress and technological change across Britain between 1930 and 1960. General Post Office (GPO) posters were commissioned in the context of specific channels of communication. Posters were designed for Post Office walls, pillar boxes and transport vehicles.

The exhibition posters offer a variety of visual language adopted to meet these different needs. GPO posters included work by those associated with both fine art and graphic design, demonstrating the blurring of the boundaries between high art and popular culture that poster design encouraged.

This exhibition showcases 25 of the best of these posters.

Air Mail Routes, Edward McKnight Kauffer, 1937 (POST 110/3177) .

The Post Office in Pictures

The Post Office in Pictures is an exhibition showcasing a selection of inspiring images sourced from the BPMA’s vast collections.

Photography was one of the key tools used by the GPO PR Department (est. 1934) to reach and engage with the general public. In order to supply its fledgling Post Office Magazine with professionally-produced photographs, members of the GPO Photographic Unit began to accompany the magazine’s journalists.

Down Wapping Way, 1935 (POST 118/252).

The exhibition showcases 30 outstanding photographs from the 1930’s to the 1980’s. Also available to read alongside the exhibitions will be copies of the Post Office Magazines, from which many of these photographs are drawn.

From Tuesday 19th March to Thursday 27th June 2013 selected posters from The BPMA’s Designs on Delivery exhibition will be on display at Great Western Hospital, Swindon.

Design played a crucial role in promoting social progress and technological change across Britain between 1930 and 1960. The commercial poster reached cultural maturity during this period and became the most eloquent of the mass media.

From the 1930s onwards the Post Office became a leader in the field of poster design, commissioning some of Britain’s most recognized artists and designers. This success owes much to the appointment of Stephen Tallents as the Post Office’s first public relations officer in 1933. Under his guidance a Poster Advisory Group composed of key figures in the arts and business led the commissioning process.

Some of the posters commissioned were commercially driven. Others were intended simply as self-publicity or for creating goodwill among its publics. The Post Office’s rich store of material could also, wrote Tallents in 1935, make a contribution to the ‘picture of Britain’.

GPO posters included work by those associated with both fine art and graphic design, demonstrating the blurring of the boundaries between high art and popular culture that poster design encouraged. This exhibition showcases the best of these posters.

The exhibiting of Designs on Delivery has been made possible through a partnership with Paintings in Hospitals. Paintings in Hospitals is a registered charity that uses visual art to create environments that improve health, wellbeing and the healthcare experience for service users, their families and staff.

Designs on Delivery will be exhibited in the Temporary Exhibition Space (Main Entrance – Ground Floor) at the Great Western Hospital. The exhibition is open daily. Entry is free of charge and open to all. For opening hours, please see the Hospital’s website www.gwh.nhs.uk or for more information on the exhibition please see our website.

The national languages of Wales are Welsh and English, and by law both are treated equally by the public sector. The posters above and below, produced by the Post Office in 1975, reflect this – both have the same design and message, they are just in different languages.

Poster advertising final posting dates, 1975. (POST 110/0097)

The title of this blog post, Nadolig Llawen, means Merry Christmas in Welsh, and as this is our last blog for 2012 we wish you both a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year (Blwyddwyn Newydd Dda in Welsh).

The BPMA blog will return in early 2013 with posts on the Family History, Drive-in Post Offices, Mail on the island of St Kilda, the upcoming London Underground stamps and much more!

In the lead-up to Christmas we are sharing with you 12 Posters of Christmas, a dozen classic postal posters from the Royal Mail Archive. Today’s is…

Poster advertising final posting dates, 1974. (POST 110/0079)

Military personnel are constantly on the move, so spare a thought for the British Forces Post Office which has the unenviable task of getting mail to them. In 1974, as now, the families of those serving in the Army, Navy and Air Force had to be very organised to ensure their loved ones received their Christmas cards and parcels. Mail from home is a great morale boost to servicemen and women on operations far from home, especially at Christmas time.

In the 1960s when this poster was produced most mail was still sorted by hand but the Post Office was hatching an ambitious plan to reshape the entire network and it needed the public to change with them. A new breed of sorting office was being developed, filled with “coding desks” at which staff would operate keyboards in order to register the mail as it entered the system. Postcodes, which compressed the information in every address were key to making this new type of sorting office work.

A line of postmen operating coding desks at Croydon Head Post Office, 1969. (POST 118/5424)

Between 1966 and 1974 every address in the United Kingdom was given a postcode and this poster from 1968 was part of the accompanying publicity campaign. Royal Mail was still promoting the postcode using posters and other methods as recently as the 1990s, a reflection of how long it takes to effect major change. You can read more about postcoding in our blog post Publicising the postcode or in our article on Postcodes on our website.

In the lead-up to Christmas we are sharing with you 12 Posters of Christmas, a dozen classic postal posters from the Royal Mail Archive. Today’s is…

Poster advertising Christmas greetings stationery; featuring two air letters; one with a nativity scene and one with a pear tree, October 1967. (POST 110/1544)

Like the Airgraph the air letter came about during the Second World War. It was developed to provide soldiers with an easy method of sending letters by air that weighed little and therefore required less fuel to transport. In the post-war era decorative air letters became available in post offices, with special Christmas air letters first issued in the 1960s.

This poster advertises 1967’s Christmas air letter designs. It was decided to issue one seasonal and one religious-themed air letter in that year, and the chosen designs were a nativity scene by Eric Fraser and Clive Abbott’s ‘partridge in a pear tree’. Michael and Sylvia Goamans designed the printed ‘stamp’ used on both air letters.

While Eric Fraser (1902-83) is less well known in the field of stamp and postal stationery design than Abbott or the Goamans, he submitted a number of designs on various occasions during the 1950s and 1960s, and had previously undertaken poster design work for the Post Office. You can see several of Fraser’s poster designs on our Flickr site.

In the lead-up to Christmas we are sharing with you 12 Posters of Christmas, a dozen classic postal posters from the Royal Mail Archive. Today’s is…

Poster recommending that mail be tied in bundles to assist with the Christmas mail, designed by Kenneth Bromfield, c. 1967. (POST 110/2581)

Until as recently as the 1990s it was common for the Post Office to request that large numbers of letters or cards be posted in bundles. Assuming the public bundled the letters and cards correctly, this assisted greatly with mail sorting during the busy Christmas period.

Royal Mail no longer asks that you bundle your letters and cards as a great deal of mail is now sorted by machines which electronically read the address and postcode on each item of mail.